The biological diversity makes our lives livable in the planet trough an array of ecological processes which provide us vital products and services, such as foods and materials that contributes to the economy. Although, factors such as habitat destruction, biological invasion and climate change have been taken numerous species to extinction. The lasting natural areas […]

Electrical power supply is among the first critically important services in disaster areas. Especially natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floodings lead to a destruction of the installed power grid and portable electricity becomes indispensable. One innovative solution is Blue Freedom Portable, a lightweight hydropower generator with 5W output capacity. With a weight of […]

Migratation of refugess are indeed a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a Society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. It affects both physically and mentally. It also causes health and safety […]

A new refugee tent has been designed by the team at M2B Inflatable in Sofia, Bulgaria. This refugee tent is inflatable and will offer an affordable, dignified and practical shelter against extreme weather. The inflatable tent provides immediate emergency housing solutions and adapts to any disaster area. The inflated walls of the tent will offer […]

The Scottish company Trakke has redeveloped the nomadic yurt shelter and created the Jero Yurt. The temporary housing innovation is a lightweight dwelling that pops up and was designed to be used for events such as backyard parties or off-grid camping experiences with a modern twist. The Jero’s compact design even allows it to be […]

The innonatives team is proud to present the first winners of the first completed innonatives challenge. Please see here for the winning solutions of the Sustainable Kitchen challenge http://innonatives.com/challenge/sus-brazil/solutions-sorted/winners Congratulations to the winners !!! Your innonatives Team

It was seven years ago that Ecosphere Technologies revealed its first iteration of a self-contained relief unit for disaster-struck areas. The company has since been busy refining the system’s form and function and has now announced the completion of what it says to be the world’s largest deployable solar power generator. Capable of generating 15 […]

Join the next big thing! Attend the first Sustainability Maker Convention, the world’s first conference on Open Innovation, Crowd Sourcing and Crowd Funding for Sustainability. Be among the first to witness the start of the next Sustainability innovation movement and to know about the www.innonatives.com open innovation for Sustainability platform. Registration Please register online before October […]

The Ruins Catheter, designed by Idan Raizberg, is a device made to rescue people from collapsed buildings or debris. The rescue device could be used after earthquake or in response to any collapse. The design is inspired by a medical balloon catheter, used to expand arteries. “At the start of the project, I outlined for […]

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Introduction

Disasters such as, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, famines and wars cause destruction and suffering to humankind. Whether these are natural and inevitable, or man-made and unnecessary, we can improve our means of reacting and aiding the victims affected.

This website is to function as a source of information and a communication platform for exchanging knowledge, experience, ideas and projects. How can we design life in a way that we are better prepared and have better infrastructure, methods to avoid damage, suffering and death tolls?

Short and direct

Three years ago, Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.0. Habitat for Humanity was able to help more than 200,000 people. Just recently the “Jimmy Carter Project 2012” took place. Though recovery has been slow and arduous, progress is visible in the new community of Santo. In February 2012, 155 families moved from […]

Hangout is a semi-permanent shelter which combines the practicality of a tent and the safety and comfort of a house. It was designed as a solution to accommodate the influx of tourists visiting an urban area during the period that it hosts a festival. Hangout consists of a tarpaulin which is stretched in-between two wooden facades. one side […]

Map of Life is built with the technology of Google Maps. The pilot of the Map of Life website allows users to map the global distribution of almost all 30,000 species of terrestrial vertebrate animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and North American fresh water fish. The platform is meant to inform users about the […]

Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, Christian organization that seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action worldwide. Habitat has built and renovated more than 500,000 homes around the world, providing more than 2.5 million people with safe, decent, affordable shelter. […]

EarthKaya is dedicated in providing low cost, low impact, earth bag building solutions in South Africa. Less time, less impact, less cost. In a world where organic agriculture is more expensive than traditional crops, solar panels are often costly to install and electric cars are inconvenient to run, many people may be reluctant to ‘go […]

Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Hoff retired from exporting flowers and turned to invention. His invention, Groasis Waterboxx is basically a 20-inch by 10-inch polypropylene box that captures water from the air in order to support the growth of new plants and trees. The inspiration for this box is modeled after the way excrement protects seeds that […]

After the Tohoku Kanto great earthquake (on March 11, 2011, at 2:46 pm local time), a magnitude 9.0 earthquake (7 shindo on the japanese scale) occurred off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. It was followed by a huge tsunami. This earthquake is the strongest ever recorded in japan, and the fourth largest recorded […]

A new hospital typology has been designed by the team of Hord Coplan Macht + Spevco that eliminates the need for a standard hospital. In their design, 58 trailers provide a fully operational, fully mobile 48-bed hospital. The trailers include every aspect of a hospital – from waiting gift shops, to surgical suites with four […]

Shelter Centre is a non-governmental organization registered in Switzerland that supports the sector of humanitarian operations that responds to the transitional settlement and reconstruction needs of populations affected by conflicts and natural disasters, from the emergency phase until durable solutions are reached. – The activities of Shelter Centre The 2006 – 2011 programme supports the […]

The Monash Disaster Resilience Initiative (MDRI) has been established to harness university-wide expertise with the goal of strengthening community-based disaster resilience. The aim is to provide the expertise to shape new approaches to disaster preparedness and management under the context of the Council of Australian Governments’ National Strategy for Disaster Resilience. This will […]

These spherical, rugged, low-cost and autonomous sensors from Intel are designed to be thrown into a fire and report back data such as temperature, free-volatiles and air quality to first responder trucks via WiFi. Vital information such as the hottest spot and the chemical composition of a fire can be sent to both the firefighters’ smartphones and […]

adaptable habitat for aid distribution in crisis areas – 2011 ad – hab+ is an adaptable, mobile, multifunctional and lightweight habitation system primarily for aid distribution in catastrophic and crisis areas. The shape is bionic, inspired by and further developed out of polyhedrical foam structures. Due to the geometry, technical and spatial clustering of several units […]

An innovative, low-cost water filter for families in developing countries Hundreds of millions of people still only have access to unsafe drinking water sources. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for millions of […]

The world is facing a crisis in cancer management that concerns developing countries in particular. The average life expectancy in developing countries is increasing in a predictable way. Data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) indicates that cancer incidence in developing countries will increase dramatically in the first two decades of this […]

SHIGERU BAN ARCHITECTS are currently preparing to deploy simple partitions for evacuees taking shelter at gymnasiums in the Tohoku region. For people taking shelter in these sites, it is necessary to avoid distress from the lack of privacy and high density. SHIGERU BAN ARCHITECTS asks for support of this important disaster relief endeavor. Donations made to the following […]

In order to be better prepared for disasters, primarily focused on resistance to tsunamis, the resistance disaster house was designed to safeguard families living in vulnerable coastal areas in Japan. This resistance disaster house design was designed to resist disaster and to provide shelter from natural disasters. This Tsunami house resistance design is located in […]

Most important and featured

Module Soteria is designed to provide homes for people in disaster zones in a very short period of time. All the equipment is inside the module as standard. It has dimensions of a 40ft shipping container. The Module can be transported by different modular chassis such as, crawler chassis for extreme off-road, hover chassis, or […]

The U.S. EPA’s Office of Water is pleased to announce the Campus RainWorks Challenge for undergraduate and graduate students. Student teams are invited to create an innovative green infrastructure design for a site on their campus showing how managing stormwater at its source can benefit the campus community and the environment. Winning teams will earn […]

The UK based education charity Architecture Sans Frontières-UK (ASF-UK – www.asf-uk.org) is running it’s annual International Workshop this year in Cameroon in August. The workshop focus is Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of an ongoing building project in Bambouti, Eastern Cameroon. About this workshop: This 12 day workshop will explore, teach and test methods of measuring impacts through participatory planning, monitoring […]

Vancouver-based studio Molo Design came up with their concept for an easily adaptable shelter in July of 2011. Their “softshelter” system relies on stretchable expanses of kraft paper that form soft, pliable grids of personal space. These grids click together with magnets or collapse into a series of flat, stackable forms when decommissioned. Intended to be adjusted […]

MATERIALICA Design Award : Winner Category Student Award The global trend in population migration from the countryside to the city, together with the increasingly extreme weather conditions caused by global warming, are leading to an increase in situations where large quantities of people will have to be evacuated and looked after in the long-term. Here […]

Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Hoff retired from exporting flowers and turned to invention. His invention, Groasis Waterboxx is basically a 20-inch by 10-inch polypropylene box that captures water from the air in order to support the growth of new plants and trees. The inspiration for this box is modeled after the way excrement protects seeds that […]

Wind turbines are generally utilized to generate clean power derived from wind energy. But there is an innovative concept that entails the usage of wind turbines to indirectly supply and purify water in desert conditions. Contrived by energy company Eole Water, this intriguing yet simplistic technology is already being successfully tested in the arid regions […]

The Argonaut Vehicles are designed to provide the specialized equipment necessary for technical rescue situations such as auto accidents requiring vehicle extrication, building collapses, confined space rescue, rope rescues and swiftwater rescues. The Argonaut helps to rescue people from natural calamities such as floods, cyclones, earthquakes, fires and from any disaster zone with any type of […]

The James Dyson Award is an international student design award running in 18 countries. It’s run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, as part of its mission to encourage the next generation of design engineers to be creative, be challenged and to invent. THE BRIEF “Design something that solves a problem” The […]

The space-based technology that lets GPS-equipped motorists constantly update their precise location will undergo a major test of its ability to rapidly pinpoint the location and magnitude of strong earthquakes across the western United States. Results from the new Real-time Earthquake Analysis for Disaster (READI) Mitigation Network soon could be used to assist prompt disaster […]

Professor Bruce Logan and his team from Pennsylvania State University have developed technology that treats waste water and generates energy at the same time – two priorities for Middle Eastern municipalities. Combining Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) technology developed in the Netherlands and Norway, which harvests energy where fresh water and sea water meet, with Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) that use organic matter to create an electric current, […]

After the Tohoku Kanto great earthquake (on March 11, 2011, at 2:46 pm local time), a magnitude 9.0 earthquake (7 shindo on the japanese scale) occurred off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. It was followed by a huge tsunami. This earthquake is the strongest ever recorded in japan, and the fourth largest recorded […]